Letters: Bureaucrats stall technology projects

DANA POINT, Steve Irons: It should not be too surprising that the Obamacare website

Marilyn Tavenner, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services at a hearing on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2013.

is encountering problems. Recent history has shown that government bureaucrats are inept when tackling technology.

One example includes Great Britain's National Health Service attempt to create the world's largest civilian computer system linking all parts of the NHS only to abandon the project after spending 11.4 billion pounds ($18.3 billion). The project was beset by changing specifications, technical challenges and clashes with suppliers that left the project years behind schedule and way over cost. Sound familiar?

Closer to home, last year, after spending $135 million and seven years, the California Department of Motor Vehicles dumped its effort to overhaul the state's 40-year-old computer system that processes driver's licenses and vehicle registrations.

In 2012, after doling out $500 million, the California Court system pulled the plug on the effort to electronically connect every courthouse in the state when the costs ballooned to $2 billion.

Finally, the project to upgrade California's payroll system was canceled because it was years behind schedule, the cost was triple the original $400 million estimate and it didn't work.

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FULLERTON, James Fabera: The spin now on rising insurance premiums is that Obamacare eliminates “substandard policies,” and as a result, I'm being “upgraded.” So now my plan is considered “substandard.” But who is to say? I chose the plan, spent time researching it, spoke with an insurance representative before purchasing it and was happy with it.

For a dermatologist appointment I had no co-payment, and the plan paid approximately $500 of a $750 bill. So now these masterminds are telling me I can't have it. Am I too stupid to choose my own insurance plan?

What chutzpah.

The climate 'herd effect'

TUSTIN, W.A. Sauvageot: Reader Dennis Baker [“Climate change: 2 views,” Letters, Oct. 24] is right to question the claim by Donald Falk and Gregg Garfin [“Humanity's dubious climate milestone,” Opinion, Oct. 22], but he's right for the wrong reasons. Dating by radioactive isotopes such as potassium 40 or argon 40 can provide fairly accurate dates back to millions of years. But Falk and Garfin are wrong in their assertion that the Earth has not seen such climate change in millions of years.

Although the public normally thinks of an ice age as just the period of glacial expansion (glacial maxima), they encompass both glacial maxima and glacial minima or glacial retreat. In fact, we are still in the Modern Ice Age, in which the last glacial maxima was about 30,000 years ago. We are in a period of glacial retreat, in which we should expect global warming. The next glacial advance will begin in about 70,000 years. Meanwhile, the Earth heats up.

There is much reason for skepticism about climate change. While there is no doubt it is increased by human activities, it is wise to bear in mind that scientists are like other people and are subject to the same motivations: fame among peers, fortune, narcissism and the “herd” effect. The history of science is replete with cases in which a theory became nearly universally accepted, only to be abandoned later. (See Thomas S. Kuhn's book, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.”)

The herd effect is often characterized by refusal of journals to even accept papers considered heterodoxical to the prevailing theory. Peer review is, in these cases, likely to be reviews by those who are already convinced of the current theory.

This is not to say that climate scientists are swayed by these factors. But it is grounds for at least a modicum of skepticism.

Our zombie economy

ORANGE, Judith Watson: Just who owns the money an individual works hard to earn? Lately, it seems like the federal government does, when it feels free to raise taxes so it can finance its pet projects. It seems that those people who rely on the government to finance their lives do.

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